Friday, 2 December 2016

Fascism: A Primer for our Time

The election of Donald Trump as president of the US has catapulted the word “fascism” into everyday use these days, with many people
claiming that Trump and at least some of his supporters are fascists or exhibit
fascist tendencies.

So, what exactly is
fascism? “Exactly” is a hard task because defining fascism is a bit like
picking up jelly in your hands. It is also difficult to produce a rational
analysis of something that was and is fundamentally irrational. “Fascist theory”
is essentially an oxymoron.

The term “fascism” derives
from Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), who
used it to describe his mishmash of political ideas, as well as the party he
founded at the end of World War I, the
Fascist Party of Italy. The word “fascism” comes from a Roman symbol, the fasci,
an axe around which are tied a bundle of sticks. The fasci represents the idea
of strength through mass unity, an idea Mussolini stressed endlessly.

The Italian fascists were
also the first to gain political power, in 1922, through a famous bluff, the “March
on Rome.”

As thousands of his fascist
supporters moved toward the capital, establishment politicians caved into Il
Duce’s threats of violence and made him Prime Minister. Presto!

Mussolini’s success made
him a global celebrity and soon produced a horde of imitators in other
countries, including France, the UK, and the USA. Fascist or fascistic regimes
took power in a number of European countries, and some in Latin America.

The most extreme and
dangerous fascist regime, of course, began its reign of terror in 1933 when Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) became Chancellor of Germany, vowing to ”make Germany great
again.” he soon dropped "Chancellor" in favor of "Der Fuehrer" (The Leader)

Hitler’s Nazi Party
(short for National Socialist German Workers’ Party) was a joke through the
1920s. After 1933, only Nazis and their supporters were laughing. Interestingly,
Hitler’s party never won a majority of the German vote.

Fascism is difficult to
define precisely because it took different forms in different countries. One
reason for this is that all fascist movements embraced extreme nationalism,
which by its nature is localistic. Nationalists emphasize differences, what
makes their nation better than their neighbors’.

Fascists dressed up their
rhetoric in a fervent devotion to national traditions, many of them old myths
or new ones invented to enhance fascist domination. Nostalgia for a mythical
past is central to the fascist appeal. So is the belief in a Supreme Leader who
will restore a lost national greatness (Rome, the Second Reich).

Fascism thus was – and is
-- largely defined by what it was/is against. But not entirely. In addition to
exalting the nation-state, fascists posed as the defenders of traditional
values, especially “traditional” religious and family values. Hitler promised
to protect Christianity

"as the very basis of our collective
morality. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian
spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in
literature, in the theatre, and in the press ... in short, we want to burn out
the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture
as a result of liberal excess during the past few years."

Nazi propaganda also promoted the family unit,
motherhood (source of cannon fodder), and healthy living, as can be seen in the
following posters.

Fascism can be endlessly confusing because it
appeals to the emotions, not the intellect. Fascist propaganda is often illogical
because is based on the premise that most people do not think but feel. Hence,
they will accept the most glaring contradictions and outrageous claims without difficulty.

Fascism was/is always bursting with
contradictions: denouncing modern science while embracing technology based on
science, especially military and surveillance technology. Hitler is infamous
for arguing that a Jewish world conspiracy controlled both capitalism and communism, and
that Soviet Russia was a new tool of the Jews to enslave and degrade the pure (and fictional) "Aryan
Race." The United States was another tool.

“The danger to which Russia succumbed is always
present for Germany ... the striving of
the Jewish people for world domination …In Russian Bolshevism we must see the
attempt undertaken by the Jews in the twentieth century to achieve world
domination.”

Mein Kampf, 1926

One of the problems
in assessing fascist leaders is the extent to which they believed their own
rhetoric. Mussolini and Hitler both embraced the concept of the “Big Lie” –
that if you repeated something outrageous often enough, and loudly enough,
people would begin to believe it if it coincided with their existing prejudices. In this sense, fascism is not "forced" on people. They accept it, often enthusiastically.

Untangling fascist
propaganda from fascist policy and “principles” can be infuriatingly difficult.
Will this leader do what he says he will do, or is it a lot of hot air? History
is not comforting. A glass of wine, please.

About Me

Following more than thirty years as a history professor, I am now doing freelance writing, editing, speaking, and consulting. I received my PhD. from
the University of Wisconsin-Madison and taught history at the College of
Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina from 1974 until 2008.

My most recent non-fiction work,
Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry (Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2011) has received excellent reviews and was a co-winner of the SHEAR
Prize (2012) for best book on the history of the early American republic.

I have reviewed manuscripts for journals and academic publishers and
have consulted or done research on various historical projects for individuals,educational television,and organizations, including most recently, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Atlantic Studies, South Carolina Educational Television, and University of South Carolina Press.

I have recently completed a novel of the American Revolution entitled Garden of Liberty and am working on a second novel, about a London physician and the body snatching trade in the 1790's, tentatively entitled Wells of Death.

SKILLS: Writing, Editing, Researching, Consulting, Teaching, Public Speaking. AWARDS, PRIZES, HONORS: SHEAR Best Book Prize, Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, 2012, co-winner.Distinguished Professor, College of Charleston, 2002Governor’s Distinguished Professor, College of Charleston, 1998South Carolina Historical Association, Prize for Best Paper published in Proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Association, 1993-94Distinguished Teaching Award, College of Charleston, 1985

MAJOR PUBLICATIONS: Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Associate Editor, South Carolina Encyclopedia. Responsible for hundreds of entries on medicine and science, many of which I wrote myself. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005.

Moonlight, Magnolias, and Madness: Insanity in South Carolina from the Colonial to the Progressive Eras. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.